Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?": Arnold Fiend

In Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" critics argue whether the character of Arnold Friend, clearly the story's antagonist, represents Satan in the story. Indeed, Arnold Friend is an allegorical devil figure for the main reason that he tempts Connie, the protagonist, into riding off with him in his car.

Oates characterizes Arnold Friend at first glance as "a boy with shaggy, black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold"(581). She lets the reader know that Arnold is not a teenager when Connie begins to notice the features such as the painted eyelashes, his shaggy hair which looked like a wig, and his stuffed boots; these features led her to believe he was not a teenager, but in fact, much older. Oates does make Arnold out to be a psychopathic stalker, but never objectively states the diabolical nature to his character.

In "Connie's Tambourine Man", a critical essay on the story, the authors write about Arnold Friend: "There are indeed diabolical shades to Arnold just as Blake and Shelley could see Milton's Satan a positive, attractive symbol of the poet, the religious embodiment of creative energy, so we should also be sensitive to Arnold's multifaceted and creative nature"(Tierce and Crafton 608). Mike Tierce and John Michael Crafton suggest that Arnold Friend is not a diabolical figure, but instead a religious and cultural savior.

On a more realistic note, Joyce M. Wegs argues the symbolism of Arnold Friend as a Satan figure when she writes: "Arnold is far more a grotesque portrait of a psychopathic killer masquerading as a teenager; he also has all the traditional, sinister traits of that arch deceiver and source of grotesque terror, the devil"(616). She also writes about how the author sets up the idea of a religious, diabolical figure when she links popular music and its values as Connie's perverted version of a religion. Another hint is Arnold's...

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...In the short story “Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen,” Joyce Carol Oats uses characterization including methods such as symbolism and allusions to develop her characters, and thus establish her theme of the cross roads Connie faces in her transition from the innocence of her adolescence to the impurity of adulthood facilitated by the antagonist, Arnold Friend.
From the beginning of the story, the reader sees Connie has a strong desire to make her early transition into adulthood. Although she in only 15, she acts like an adult as “everything about her had two sides to it, one for home, and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oats, pg 510). She frequently tests her limits by making her parents believe she was with her friend shopping or seeing a movie, however “sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out” (Oats, pg 510). There she met boys and eventually went out to their cars with them to engage in sexual activities. This shows how Connie, though only 15, wanted to experience adulthood behaviors. Oates also symbolically portrays the anxiety Connie feels in choosing between adolescence and adulthood by depicting her standing at the doorway when Arnold Friend arrives at her house. Connie, is nervous and reluctant to leave her home...

...Essay 3
As a child we often fantasize about finally obtaining freedom in adulthood, but often find the realities of adulthood shatter these childhood dreams. The journey between childhood and adulthood is frustrating and confusing, and in most adolescents, is filled with apprehension and anxiety. For the protagonist Connie, this distress is expressed in her dreamlike encounter with Arnold Friend. In the short story “Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?,” Joyce Carol Oates used the interaction between her two main character, to reveal the internal fear and conflict of a fifteen year old girl maturing into a young woman.
Oates chooses narrate her story in the third person giving us a glimpse in to Connie’s thoughts, her lonely isolation form her family, and her daydreams of boys and love songs. Connie’s negative, always nagging mother makes her fear growing up and being miserable too. Greg Johnson interprets the story as “a cautionary tale, suggesting that young women are ‘going’ exactly where their mothers and grandmothers have already ‘been‘” (166). One of Connie’s foreshadowing daydreams brings to light ominous events to come: “Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (153). This is the first time Connie’s thoughts...

...The character in “where are yougoing, wherehaveyoubeen?” Connie is affected by the role she plays in modern society. Fifteen year old Connie has the confusing, often exterior behavior typical of those girls who are facing the difficult transition from girlhood to womanhood in the 1960s. She is caught between her roles as daughter, friend, sister, and object of sexual desire, uncertain of which represents her real self. The sixties were the age of youth, young people wanted change. The changes affected education, values, lifestyles, and entertainment. Many of the revolutionary ideas which began in the sixties affected this main character Connie who just wanted to fit in her society.
“Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home.” Connie acted differently when she was at home then when she was with her friends. As society expected, Connie wanted to be just a typical teenager who would do her best to impress boys with her looks, until eventually she impressed the wrong one. Connie never learned how to be careful in the way she portrayed herself. She was blinded by the fact that she was beautiful. Most girls in the sixties wanted to be attractive and noticed, but for Connie that was everything she had, attention. She had the wrong type of attention that eventually leads her to the wrong man. Because girls in the sixties were...

...INTRODUCTION:
“Where Are YouGoingWhereHaveYouBeen?” by Joyce Carol, showcases the inevitable effects of youthful exuberance in a teenage girl. The story is a compelling tale which unveils the vulnerability of Connie, a young teenage girl who could barely substantiate fantasy from reality. She prides herself as a pretty girl who understands the basic principles of life. Her encounter with Arnold Friend reveals her as someone who lacks the mental ability to make meaningful decisions and accurate when necessary. Her desire for attention and frivolities facilitates in subjecting her as a victim of a wicked and complex world. She is obsessed with her beauty; her desire for boys and attention makes her pride herself as a “paragon of beauty”. She finds a great deal of pleasure in sexuality, listening to music and hanging out with friends (boys). Her sense of immaturity and inexperience reflects through her ugly ordeal with Arnold Friend, a young man who is twice her age. He takes advantage of her and inflicts her with profound terror. He succeeds in subjecting her to unbearable pains and agony. His intimidation and humiliation enables Connie’s understanding that “the world is not a bed of roses”; Arnold subjects her to learn her lesson the hard way.
PLOT SUMMERY:...

...In Joyce Carol Oates’ “‘Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?’ and Smooth Talk: Short Story into Film,” Oates writes that Connie “An innocent young girl is seduced by way of her own vanity” and that “she confuses death for erotic romance” (419). Oates clearly defines her point when Connie first discovers Arnold Friend at the drive in diner. She catches Friend staring at her with a big smile and Connie “slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn’t help looking back” (409). The fact that Connie “slits” her eyes and “couldn’t help looking back” (409) shows that she is interested, but does not want to put her true feelings on display. Her more erotic interest comes in the form of his style and physical appearance. Oates illustrates this by using diction and imagery; “she liked the way he dressed” and Connie noticing “the small hard muscles of his arms and shoulders” (419) when Friend First appears at her house. Unlike Connie, the reader sees Arnold Friend in all of his depravity, we see him as the predator. He displays this at the drive in by “ waving his finger and laughing” and saying “Gonna get you baby” (409). Oates again uses carefully thought out word choice to prognosticate that we could see Friend later in the story to possibly confront...

...dramatic irony of “Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?” conveys the tone of warning about temptation. Connie’s situation is that she does not feel appreciated at home and uses her looks and actions to get attention and appreciation from boys even if it is short-term. She is self-conscious about her looks and is constantly worried about how other people perceive her. Friend’s fantasy is that Connie will willingly go with him and be his “lover” (605) even before he officially met her. The reality of the situation is that she does not want to go with this strange man, but is being forced into it because of her fear, which makes her weak and submissive.
Connie is fifteen years old and obviously self-conscious because of the love that she never receives at home. Her whole life revolves around attention from boys since she does not feel loved at home. Her sister June appears to be the favorite in the family, as she receives all of the positive attention. Connie's mother doesn’t speak kindly to Connie or about Connie, and Connie doesn't think well of her mother either. Her father does whatever he can to please Connie but doesn’t seek for a good father-daughter relationship. They never talk about what is happening in their lives and act as if they are only acquaintances. Connie wants to appear older and wiser than she actually is and her head is always full of meaningless...

...﻿“Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?”
As I read “Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?” I sat on the floor in the corner of my room, completely alone in a four-bedroom suite on a Saturday night. I desperately wished that what happened to Connie would not happen to me that night. Few stories have terrified me as much as this one by Joyce Carol Oates. I feared I would soon encounter someone like Arnold Friend, and he would threaten my family if I refused his seductions to blindly follow him. Luckily for me, the story had several indications through descriptions of the characters and surroundings that Connie’s situation was not completely realistic. There were several hints that all was but a dream, that Arnold Friend was a demonic figment of her imagination.
Connie is described as a typical teenager: giggly and self-centered. She was fully aware of her beauty and thought nothing else mattered. She believed her mother was jealous of her looks to the point she would scold Connie for frequently checking her reflection. She acted one way at home and another among friends; she wore her clothes differently depending on where she was as well as walked and laughed differently away from her family....

...“Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?” Paper
“Where Are YouGoing, WhereHaveYouBeen?” is a short story that poses many questions centered around the protagonist, Connie and the antagonist Arnold Friend and his “comrade” Ellie. The fate of Connie at the end of the story is still up for debate after all these years after the story was published in 1966. The main question posed is who actually is Arnold Friend? Is he the devil or something else? The answer may never be fully known but in my opinion I think that Arnold Friend is a figment of Connie’s imagination that is supposed to symbolize Connie’s entrance into womanhood.
Since Connie is a rebellious fifteen year old girl that fights with her parents and constantly wants to do her own things, she is acting like a normal teenage girl that is of course not yet fully mature. She enjoyed going out with her girlfriends and complaining about the “hard life” she had and the constant nagging her mother gave. One night when Connie picks up a guy named Eddie, she “drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in...